Cressy closed the door, and impressed by the urgency in Hero’s voice, turned die key as an added precaution against interruption and said: “I believe Mama intends to take morning coffee with Mrs Kealey. Why, Hero?”
“Because I must see Olivia at once. It should be Thérèse, for she has far more sense. But since both your father and Clay seem so set against her, it will have to be Olivia. And I particularly do not wish Clay to know. If he hears that I have asked to see her this morning he will only start being suspicious, and if Aunt Abby knows she will be sure to tell him.”
Cressy drew a deep breath and put her hands to her throat. “Then he was right. He said something had happened. Hero, what is it?”
“Something most unpleasant,” said Hero with a shiver. “But I cannot waste time telling you about it now. We must send a message to Olivia…Ring that hand-bell for Fattûma, please Cressy. When does your mother mean to leave?”
“Not until half-past ten, I believe,” said Cressy, complying with the request.
“Excellent. That should give us plenty of time. And as your father and Clay have some business with the Sultan this morning, it should be quite easy for Olivia to slip over here for half an hour without them knowing. If they should find out they will only think that she called in to borrow a book, or ask for a receipt for that mango preserve or some such thing. Now where did I put my pen?”
Olivia Credwell had arrived at the Consulate an hour and a half later, but not alone: “I was sure you would not mind,” she explained in a breathless aside to Hero, “but Thérèse had called to enquire about some seedlings that Jane had promised her—runner beans, Thérèse’s husband is very partial to them—and Jane was out, for she has taken the twins to play with the Lessing children, so I brought Thérèse with me. Is that all right?”
“It’s providential,” said Hero. “Provided that no one comes to hear of it. In fact I would prefer it not to be known that either of you came here today. Cressy, where can we be sure of being private?”
They had retired to the little boudoir that adjoined Cressy’s bedroom, and having first made certain that there were no servants loitering within earshot, Hero closed the door and said briefly; “I have to tell you that our secret is known.”
Olivia gave an audible gasp and Cressy turned pale, but Thérèse merely said composedly: “What secret? That we wish Seyyid Bargash well? Or that we have assisted to deliver the treasure chests from Muscat into his hands?”
“Both. There must be a traitor in Beit-el-Tani. That is why I sent for Olivia. Someone must go there at once and warn the Seyyida Cholé that one of her household is a spy.”
It had seemed vitally important to Hero that her fellow conspirators should learn at once that their activities had been discovered. But Thérèse evidently saw nothing to be alarmed at, remarking that the only thing that would surprise her would be the discovery that there was only one spy at Beit-el-Tani and not twenty, since it was well known that Arabs revelled in intrigue: it was meat and drink to them, and in the present circumstances they would all be spying one upon the other—being paid by both sides and betraying both sides.
“Do you mean you expected this?” demanded Hero incredulously. “You knew we would be found out?”
“It was always possible. With such people, what is not? But now that the affair is safely concluded we have nothing to worry about: least of all the gossip of informers who can prove nothing against us. From whom did you learn that all was known? It cannot have been from Monsieur your uncle!”
“From Papa?” squeaked Cressy. “Oh, Hero!”
“No, of course it wasn’t’ said Hero hurriedly. “It was someone I met when I was out riding this morning. I would prefer not to give his name, but he said that he knew all about it—and he did. Everything. At least…”
She hesitated, and Thérèse said: “Do not tell me that you admitted it?”
“Not in so many words. I tried pretending that I didn’t know what he was talking about, but it wasn’t the least use, for he told me he knew everything and said he supposed I thought myself very clever and—oh, it doesn’t matter what he said or what I said or didn’t say. The point is that he knew. And he couldn’t have known unless someone in Beit-el-Tani has been talking, so I thought you should be warned and that someone should warn those women. But it seems that I need not have worried.”
“Not worried?” exclaimed Olivia horrified. “How could you possibly do anything else?”
“I agree,” said Thérèse. “How indeed?”
“But you have just said—” began Hero indignantly.
Thérèse held up an imperative hand. “That was because I supposed that this informer was your waiting woman or perhaps a groom from the stables. But from what you tell us, that is not so; which makes it a matter more serious. It becomes necessary, I think, that you should tell us who is this man?”
“Not—” said Olivia in a fading voice, “oh, not my brother? If Hubert has discovered to what use I put the boxroom during his absence, I should sink with shame! Hero, say it is not Hubert!”
“Dan!” gasped Cressy, turning even paler.
“No, it was not,” snapped Hero, goaded. “It wasn’t either of them, and I can’t see that it matters so much who it was. The only important thing is that somebody knows.”
“There, ma chère, you are wrong,” said Thérèse with decision. “The important thing is who knows. Until we know this we cannot take precautions.”
“What precautions?”
“There are many. Par exemple, one can say a little word here or there to inspire a doubt as to this person’s veracity or his motives. Or—”
Hero heard her with a sinking heart and a sudden regret that she had not held her tongue about the events of that morning’s ride. She was remembering, too late, what Clay had said about Thérèse Tissot’s fondness for gossip and trouble-making, and realizing that she did not relish the prospect of either Thérèse or Olivia discovering just how well she was acquainted with the Captain of the Virago—or the true story of her arrival in Zanzibar. She took a deep breath, and choosing her words carefully, said:
“If you must know, my informant was a person by the name of Frost.”
“Rory Frost! You joke with us, I think.”
“I cannot imagine why you should think so,” retorted Hero a trifle sharply, “for I assure you I do not regard it as a joking matter.”
“But it is. It is ridiculous! You say it is Captain Rory who discloses to you that all is known? But for what reason? Why should he do this?”
“He threatened me!” said Hero, remembered outrage throbbing in her voice. “He was impertinent and offensive, and he accused me of meddling in affairs that I did not understand and said that I should leave them to those who did. By which he seems to have meant himself.”
“But of course! Oh that Rory! You must forgive that I laugh.”
Thérèse dabbed at her eyes with a scented scrap of lace and cambric, and after a moment or two controlled her mirth sufficiently to say: “Did you not know that he is on the side of Sultan Majid? He is Majid’s man, and he would dislike very much to learn that while his back is turned we have stolen a march upon him and advanced the cause of Bargash. We need not trouble ourselves over Monsieur le Capitaine Rory, and as for who has informed him of this, it is well known that he has many curious friends who repeat to him the talk of the bazaars and the scandals of the palaces—and even what is whispered in the women’s quarters. It cannot be helped, and we need not regard it.”
“Oh, thank heavens!” said Olivia. “Oh, the relief!”
Hero could have endorsed that sentiment with equal fervour, but for a different reason. No one, in the excitement of the moment, had thought to ask about her meeting with Rory Frost. And that, coupled with Thérèse’s airy dismissal of him as a possible danger, was for the moment relief enough. It was only after the two women had left that it occurred to her to wonder why Thérèse had been so immoderately amused. She herself cou
ld see nothing to laugh at Nothing at all! And yet Thérèse had laughed…
The trivial question nagged at her with irritating persistence for the rest of that hot morning, until Clay and Uncle Nat returned from the Palace and she forgot it.
16
The night wind, blowing strongly off the land, carried the daytime stench of refuse and sewage out to sea, and only a faint fragrance of cloves and orange blossom reached the roof of the City Palace where Majid-bin-Saïd, Sultan of Zanzibar, took his ease with a friend; comfortably bestowed on a pile of Persian carpets and silk-covered cushions, and eating sweetmeats from a silver dish. Above them the wide sweep of the sky glittered with stars as bright and as numerous as the houris of Paradise, while from below, muted by distance, came the sound of palm fronds rustling in the wind, the crash and croon of the surf and all the many night noises of an Eastern city.
Majid-bin-Saïd removed his turban for greater comfort, and propping himself up on one elbow watched a falling star draw a finger of fire across the blue, and when it had vanished said with a sigh:
“You tell me nothing new. Do you think I do not know?—I who felt the wind of the shot sing through my very hair not once, but again and yet again as my dear brother Bargash fired on me with his own hand from his own window? Of course I know! It is nothing new in my family. It runs in the blood.”
“Maybe. But it is your Highness’s blood that will soon be running if you do not put a stop to this plotting and playacting before it turns into something a deal more dangerous.”
Majid shrugged his shoulders and selecting another sugared date from the contents of the silver dish, said: “To hear you talk one would suppose that attempted assassination is not dangerous.”
Rory gave a curt laugh. “Considering he missed you at a range of about thirty yards, I cannot regard that particular attempt as serious. For one thing, the whole business was too slapdash and on the spur of the moment I imagine he was in the throes of a particularly virulent attack of jealousy and spleen when you happened to come sailing past bis window, and it probably looked to him like the chance of a lifetime…he’s got a pistol or two handy, so he grabs one and starts blazing away, but being in a towering rage, misses with every shot. If he’d planned it beforehand he’d have hired an expert marksman instead of trying to murder you himself-in which case you and I would not be discussing the incident now, because you would have joined your illustrious ancestors and I should be just as far away from your successor’s dominions as I could get But, Allah be praised, he is a damned bad shot!”
“It was getting dark, you must remember,” murmured the Sultan apologetically, excusing his brother’s indifferent marksmanship.
“Next time it may not be.”
“Are you so sure that that there will be a next time?”
“As sure as you are.”
The Sultan ate a piece of almond halwa, taking his time over it, and having wiped his fingers on a gold-fringed napkin, said hopefully: “Perhaps he will miss again; for as you say, he is a poor shot. Even as a boy he was a poor shot. How angry he would get when he missed! It annoyed him very much, because he could never bear not to be first in everything. Now I myself have never minded about that. Or not so much.”
Rory said severely: “Majid, you are digressing. What your half-brother did or did not do in the past is immaterial. It is what he is doing at present that is becoming a deal too dangerous.”
“No more dangerous than before.”
“That is where you are wrong, my friend. I regret to tell you that your brother has acquired the means to launch a full-scale rebellion against you. And though I do not think it is likely to prove over-much use to him, the fact that he has his hands on such stuff may well go to his head and give him the idea that he is now strong enough to let the shooting begin. So it is high time you bestirred yourself and did something about it. Is it not written, ‘If there be two Caliphs, kill one’?”
“You suggest then that I kill him? But, my friend, there is nothing I would like better. Only how can I do so while he enjoys the protection of these foreigners? After he tries to kill me I refuse to see or speak to him, and what happens? A large foreign ship—a ship of thirty guns—sails into my harbour, and a foreign Consul and a foreign naval Commandant call upon me and force me to receive him. You see how it is? My hands are tied by the inability of these tiresome Europeans to mind their own business or to understand that the best and quickest way of settling such matters is with a knife: or if one must, with poison, though that is a woman’s weapon.”
“A bullet would be better,” said Rory grimly. “And no more than he’s asked for. However, I see your point. It would raise the devil of a fuss if he were to be murdered at this juncture, and even that old ram-rod Edwards might find it difficult to make out a case for you.”
“You think so?” enquired the Sultan in surprise. “But why should the good Colonel find difficulty over such a thing? He is no friend of Bargash’s.”
“No. But he’s a stickler for order and the Letter of the Law. That is why he stands by you and will recognize no other claimant—because your father, on whom be the Peace, nominated you as his heir. But he wouldn’t stand for you murdering yours.”
“Perhaps not. He is a thorn in my flesh, the Colonel. He behaves towards me as though he were a teacher or a nurse and I a foolish child who must be lectured and scolded for its own good. He has no sympathy for my position in regard to slaves, and every day he comes with complaints against this man or that who, so he says, has been buying or selling or keeping slaves. Is it my fault that my father’s treaty with the English left a gap wide enough for any trader to sail his dhow through? Or that it allowed the free moving of slaves within my dominions, and did not prohibit either their entrance or their embarkation from this Island? Naturally such a situation puts temptation in the way of men who wish to trade in slaves, for though the risks (as you well know) are many, the rewards are great. And my friends and my family tell me that they would be greater still if only the British Consul could be brought to a more peaceful and accommodating frame of mind. He should calm himself by acquiring a wife and breeding many sons.”
“An occupation,” observed Rory dryly, “that has resulted in anything but calm in your Highness’s family.”
The Sultan acknowledged the hit with an appreciative chuckle. “Ah yes! But that, my dear friend, is part of our Arab character.”
He shook his head in gentle regret and popped another sweetmeat into his mouth: “We require a son, and if only daughters are born we make prayers and go on pilgrimages, and give money to the maulvies and the soothsayers And if Allah is good a son is born and all is rejoicing. But one son is not sufficient, since he may die young. So another is sired, and another. And always there is great rejoicing, for the mother of a son is a proud woman and the father of many sons has much honour. Yes, all is felicity until the boys become men and the eldest covets his father’s place and cannot wait for him to die: and when he gets it his brothers, and the mothers of those brothers plot and scheme to take it from him in their tum. It has happened in this manner for a thousand years—you have only to read the history of the Seyyids of Muscat and Oman to see that this is true. And so it will continue—for just as long as there is any place in all the world that is free of white men behaving in the manner of this Colonel Edwards!”
Rory gave a crack of laughter and said: “Then your countrymen had better make the most of it, for that isn’t going to be long. I fear this is merely a beginning, and that you are in for an era of Western interference and busy-bodying that is going to make anything you’ve seen yet look like a visit from a favourite uncle.”
“It discourages me that you should think so,” sighed the Sultan. “Why is it that the white races find it necessary to act towards us in this manner? To covet more land, and to make war and win victories to that end, is a thing I can well understand. But that other, no. For myself, I do not expect them to accept my ideas as to what is right or just or ex
pedient, and neither do I wish to force my own way of life upon them or think that they should admire it—or me. I see clearly that many of our ways would not suit them, for their blood is thin and cold and their thoughts are different. Does one expect a crow to sing sweetly in the moonlight, or a nightingale to eat carrion, just because both are birds and can fly and hatch their young from eggs? Yet saving only yourself, I have never yet met a white man who did not consider that I and my people would derive great benefit by changing our ways and imitating theirs, or who did not try and impress upon me the immense superiority of all white laws and customs. It is very strange.”
“It’s not strange at all,” retorted Rory. “Don’t tell me that good Moslems have never attempted to convert Infidels and Unbelievers to the True Faith—and by force as often as not—any time these last six hundred years? It’s the same thing.”
“But my friend,” said the Sultan reprovingly, “that is a matter of religion?”
“Ah, but then all white races—Europeans, Russians, Americans, the lot—make a religion of their own particular way of living and thinking, and are as bigoted and pig-headed about it as the most fanatical maulvie who ever preached the Faith. In that sense they are all missionaries, for it is their unalterable opinion that they have discovered the best and only possible road to Progress and the Millennium, and that it is their plain duty to herd all men along it—and to force those who will not tread it willingly with a pistol and a club if necessary, since after all, ‘it is for their own good.’”
“But it would do me no good if I accept these foreign ideas,” protested the Sultan plaintively. “I lose money and power and peace of mind by it And their ideas are as different as their gods. Monsieur Dubail says one thing and Colonel Edwards another. Mr Hollis does not agree with either and Herr Ruete will not speak with Joseph Lynch, or Mr Platt with Karl Lessing. It is the same with their priests and then: parsons and their missionaries, for some worship Bibi Miriam with chanting and the burning of candles and incense, preaching that all who will not do likewise are eternally damned, while others will permit none of these things and assert that all who do will bum. And between the two are many who balance like jugglers on a tightrope. Yet all, while execrating the others, call themselves Christians—and all, my friend, profess themselves shocked at our ways. Why, I ask you, should we of the East forsake the laws and customs of our forefathers at the bidding of ignorant and contentious foreigners whose own governments and priests cannot agree among themselves? Tell me that?”